Several times as he turned his head sideways he saw the figures and the
light, but not so clearly; it was as though the light was lessening in
power. When again he looked he saw a new fire leap out on the edge of
the cliff, and some figures to the right of it. They were signalling in
some way. So, pausing in his swimming, he rose a little from the water
and looked at them.
A thrill shot through him, and a paralysing thought that he must have
gone mad. With his wet hand he cleared his eyes, though the touching
them pained him terribly, and for an instant saw clearly:
There on the edge of the cliff, standing beside some men and waving her
arms in a wild sweep as though motioning frantically 'Keep out! keep
out!' was a woman. Instinctively he glanced to his left and saw a white
waste of leaping water, through which sharp rocks rose like monstrous
teeth. On the instant he saw the danger, and made out seaward, swimming
frantically to clear the dangerous spot before the current would sweep
him upon the rocks.
But the woman! As one remembers the last sight when the lightning has
banished sight, so that vision seemed burned into his brain. A woman
with a scarlet riding-habit and masses of long red hair blowing in the
gale like leaping flame! Could there be two such persons in the world?
No! no! It was a vision! A vision of the woman he loved, come to save
him in the direst moment of great peril!
His heart beat with new hope; only the blackness of the stormy sea was
before him as he strove frantically on.
Presently when he felt the current slacken, for he had been swimming
across it and could feel its power, he turned and looked back. As he did
so he murmured aloud:
'A dream! A vision! She came to warn me!' For as he looked all had
disappeared. Cliff and coastline, dark rocks and leaping seas, blazing
fire, and the warning vision of the woman he loved.
Again he looked where the waste of sea churning amongst the sunken rocks
had been. He could hear the roaring of waters, the thunder of great
waves beating on the iron-bound coast; but nothing could he see. He was
alone on the wild sea; in the dark.
Then truly the swift shadow of despair fell upon him.
'Blind Blind!' he moaned, and for the moment, stricken with despair,
sank into the trough of the waves. But the instinctive desire for life
recalled him. Once more he fought his way up to the surface, and swam
blindly, desperately on. Seeing nothing, he did not know which way he
was going. He might have heard better had his eyes been able to help his
ears; but in the sudden strange darkness all the senses were astray. In
the agony of his mind he could not even feel the pain of his burnt face;
the torture of his eyes had passed. But with the instinct of a strong
man he kept on swimming blindly, desperately.
* * * * *
It seemed as if ages of untold agony had gone by, when he heard a voice
seemingly beside him:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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